Surviving Facebook

Take nothing seriously. What you see in the social networks has the value of literature. They suggest  reality but one must understand: They have as much value as fantasy. Otherwise, we end up feeling distraught when, in fact, what we should be feeling is entertained.

And so the person who seeks to survive here must look at the social networks as if they were watching a movie or reading a novel or a comic book. Everything is text. The text is illustrated. But where do the text come from? Who actually writes the text? And how should we read the text so we can decode exactly what the texts mean?

There are levels of reading. The first is to read everything at face value, pun intended. One has to suspend disbelief to some extent to do this well. Otherwise, one is likely to just dismiss immediately every feed one does not agree with. And one can do this at a glance. The feeds contain recognized brand icons: “Daang Matuwid,” “Silent Majority,” are Mar Roxas and Leni Robredo brand icons; the “fist in your face,” the word “Duterte,” and many others that refer to Rodrigo Duterte.

We can glance at them and then move on without reading beyond the icons. But then we would be missing the most entertaining parts. Comments are actually quite engaging. And they are always a tragic-comic reading of ancient Greek literature unfolding before our eyes. This is the Agora, the old Greek marketplace where Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and their peers studied the world, to write and then deliver their most profound observations; the same place where “the mob,” just like cute little fishes, schooled and then decided where finally they were going. The philosophers themselves would have read beyond this level of the narrative, if only to determine whether they should be crying or letting loose a big LOL.

Anyone can write almost anything within reason on Facebook. The veracity of what is written must lie in the text itself and how the text survives over time. If the text stays within the “feeds” for long, then it has the higher chance of coming close to being believed. But the “sellers” in Facebook know this. Thus, a politician can actually hire people just to keep sharing and recycling feeds for as long as they can. The text itself is immaterial. This is an unfolding narrative. Brand recall is the ultimate target.

The Duterte campaign seems the best study of this. So one should ask, what is the Duterte brand?

The answer is complex. But two assertions come immediately to mind: Duterte is willing to do what other politicians will not do; and he is going to win no matter what. No matter the truthfulness of these assertions, they must be upheld as truth at all cost by his sellers. Keep doing this and the brand will keep working.

The first assertion is easy to put forward. “Change is coming” is always an easy proposition to sell. Humans are never happy with what they have. We have been known to jump off a cliff just to find out we cannot fly.

The second proposition, that Duterte will actually win, is an assertion that is harder to keep selling over time, notwithstanding the claim he gets stronger the more he is attacked. This is the “Achilles heel” of the Duterte campaign, which pivots around the very assertion that he will win no matter what. It is circular logic. And Duterte himself now seems the main debunker of this claim.

After making one self-defeating statement after another, he puts his own winnability in question. By picking a fight with everyone, he makes himself harder and harder to sell even in the fantasyland of Facebook.  And one imagines Duterte’s Facebook supporters, those with reputations to keep, groaning into their monitors.

They have more invested in Duterte’s winning than the supporters of other candidates. But will he win?

Duterte himself might gain much from reading the Greek classics, especially those which speak of hubris: the myth of Icarus actually makes for good reading at this time.